Friday, February 11, 2011

Saying Good-bye to the "Sound of Speed"

It's a sad, sad day, to say the least. Tom Carnegie, the inspiration for the naming of this website, has died at age 91.As I stated earlier on Twitter, there's no better way to understand how we felt about Mr. Carnegie than to read our very first blog post, which I've included below.Nothing sums up his impact on the "Indianapolis 500" and Indycar racing better than the last sentence, which reads, "...on behalf of the millions, Tom, we miss you, and thanks for the memories."

When it came to titling this blog site, I was charged with distilling what 35-plus years of open-wheel racing and the Indianapolis 500 meant to me into a scant handful of words—no easy task, I assure you. The words themselves are plain to see, but to the uninitiated, their intended meaning is predictably elusive and mysterious at best.

But to the millions of souls that have heard those same utterances echo contemplatively, grandstand-to-grandstand, across the grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, they hold true reverence. They are iconic, hair-raising, and for those whose house of worship resides at the corner of 16th Street and Georgetown, I unabashedly say biblical.

Tom Carnegie’s voice is an instrument; more precisely, a drum. Not a child’s toy, but the deepest orchestral timpani in full roll at the hands of the most proficient percussionist. It’s low-boiling thunder, truck tires on a gravel road. Launched from loudspeakers at the world’s greatest and most historic sporting venue, it’s aural fireworks—simply magic.

Mr. Carnegie didn’t just serve as public address announcer for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he institutionalized the position. From 1946 to 2006 his voice was as much a part of the month of May as the cars, the fans, the drivers.

Quite reasonably, one would expect that the 500-mile race would be his brightest stage, and without question, his performances over the years were legendary. But in this writer’s opinion, the 33 snarling engines on race day only served as recurring and rude interruptions to his impeccable skill. During an era when the word “Indy” meant an ongoing quest for faster and faster speeds, the qualifications for the race are where Mr. Carnegie’s talent truly shown.

With only one race car on the speedway at a time, he had the captive ear of thousands. His dramatic delivery, tone, and inflection had fans hanging on every word in a one-way dialogue of the most engaging sort. Having performed so brilliantly for so long, Mr. Carnegie has become well known for a number of famous phrases, but to me, there is only one.

For an Indycar driver, competing in the Indianapolis 500 each year is second only to winning it. That makes a qualification attempt at Indy one of the most dramatic 10 miles in motorsports. To accomplish qualifying successfully is a triumphant victory of the grandest character, to fail is a tragedy of the greatest proportions—Tom Carnegie knew that as well as anyone.

After circling the oval on his warm-up laps and being presented with the green flag, Carnegie would skillfully and ceremoniously launch the driver into racing’s stratosphere, as if journeying to the moon, with four simple, monosyllabic words: “annnd he’s on it!” No one on the grounds, including the brave soul behind the wheel, knew what would happen over the next four laps. That’s what made those words so powerful... the suspense; the agonizing, all-consuming suspense.

Those famous words are what the singular pursuit of Indycar racing means to me. They simply and wholly encapsulate my decades-long love affair with the sport I just can’t seem to shake. To me, if they were to be linked so closely with this brave new adventure of mine, I felt it only just to pay proper tribute to the man who spoke them so nobly.

To put it more succinctly, on behalf of the millions, Tom, we miss you, and thanks for the memories.

how we met

A journalist, I’m not, just an enthusiast with a point of view. A grown-up kid who struggled to reconcile his fascination with American open-wheel racing against others’ passion for what played out between the lines of the gridiron and ball diamond.
I first walked through the tunnel at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1973 at age 7 and was captivated. The next decade was spent pressed against chain link fence, straining for a closer look when, despite no real marketable skills, I plotted my way onto a startup Indycar team as a neophyte gofer (thanks Joe). Three years and two teams later, it was back to school.
Since those heady days, I’m holding down a cozy cubicle right here in river city, clinging to fences again, whenever the opportunity arises.
The blog? Just a quiet corner to share my take with anyone who will listen. A healthy main course of IndyCar with a palate-cleansing dose of the requisite peripherals.
Glad you’re here. If you like what you see, stop back often, and bring a friend.
—Chris